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Don’t Be This Guy

I don’t claim to be any kind of expert on agents and querying. But there are some basic things that will prevent your manuscript being rejected unnecessarily. So, unless you enjoy rejections, here are some dos and don’ts.

Do make sure the agent reps your genre.

Don’t forget to put things like word count, age range and genre in your query.

Do follow the submission guides.

Don’t use a generic form of address like Dear Agent or Dear Sir.

Do try and spell their name correctly.

Don’t react badly to a rejection. Especially with poetry.

Do be patient. Don’t chase agents about queries.

Don’t send a power-point presentation with your query. Let’s face it, no one likes power-point even when it’s necessary.

I highly recommend following agents on Twitter, and paying attention to hashtags like #tenqueries, #querylunch #500queries to get an idea what querying is like from the other side.